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The crewmen of an American half-track during a pause; one of them reads a pocketbook while others inspect the Browning heavy
machine gun. Excessively self-confident about a quick victory, the Allied expeditionary force fighting at Anzio was close to be
forced to reembark the troops.
A formation of partisans parading on the square Vittorio Emanuele in Bologna. Often these groups, following the German retreat,
were the first ones in entering the freed cities.
German soldiers, captured by the Allies in the front of Cassino the day after the battle, march towards the rearguard. War is
over for them.
A gunner sitting on the fore gun turret on a heavy bomber B-17 Flying Fortress. A Norden aiming device allowed these
aircraft to drop their load of death with notable precision. The bombing of the monastery of Montecassino was a shameful action
executed by the Allies, who justified this decision referring to an aboriginal fear from their indigenous troops of being
constantly observed by the enemy from that elevated position.
German pioneers working in the reconstruction of a railway bridge destroyed by the enemy aviation.
While some pioneers of the Wehrmacht hurry to make transitable this pass on the eastern sector of the Gothic Line, the infantry strives to delay
the enemy advance.
British infantrymen from the 8th Army training with flamethrowers in anticipation of the imminent attack against the Gothic Line,
the last stronghold of the German Army in Italy.
One of the many classification camps for German prisoners that emerged in the immediate rearguard of the American lines.
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A M4 Sherman medium tank disembarking from a Landing Ship Tank on the coasts of Anzio. The failure of the Americans on breaking
the German defensive line at Cassino led to the preparation of a second amphibious landing, aimed at surrounding the German
defenses instead of facing them. The landing at Anzio was a nigthmare for the Americans, who had to fight against hordes of
fanatic, nearly suicidal German soldiers, who desperately managed to halt the Allied advance during five months.
This M4 Sherman medium tank was destroyed in Cisterna, near Anzio, in March 1944. The M4 Sherman was too weak to engage in
combat with enough guarantees against the German heavy tanks, and this caused many losses.
Within the ruins of the town of Cassino, in a lunar landscape created by the intense Allied bombings, the only signs of life
are two British armored cars that advance with caution.
The railway line linking with Bologna was subjected to very violent bombings. In the photograph, a sector of the line in the
nearabouts of Florence after an air attack.
The crewmen of a heavy bomber B-24 Liberator posing for a souvenir photo. During the Allied advance across Italy in the summer
of 1944 the Anglo-American aerial activity intensified, which brought no little sorrow for the local populations.
An American mechanic directs the hooking of a bomb (which has its fins disassembled) under a fighter-bomber P-51 Mustang.
The Germans resisted in such a decided way the advance of the Allies that these often had to destroy with artillery fire the natural
obstacles, nests of the enemy resistance.
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